ALLENTOWN — An early-season showdown between the only Colonial Valley Conference teams still unbeaten in league play turned out to be as close as expected.

How Notre Dame and Allentown got there is another matter.

Linda Weise’s Allentown girls, going ahead for good when ND missed 23 consecutive shots over 15 minutes, held on down the stretch to outlast the Irish, 51-46, despite 29 points and 24 rebounds by Irish sophomore Sam Widmann.

Once the 5-0 Redbirds had survived an ND comeback that got the Irish to within six points with a minute left, they had improved their CVC record to 4-0.

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ND, now 5-3, fell to 4-1 in the CVC.

“At least it was a W,” said A’town senior Kathleen Kyle, who knew the expected intensity of the showdown led to a sloppy, foul-filled game that ended up with the Redbirds getting 15 points from Kali Hartshorn including 13-for-15 foul shooting, 13 from Kyle and 10 from Hope Narozniak.

Widmann grabbed 12 of her rebounds in the second quarter when her two free throws were the only points ND got as it missed 14 shots from the field.

“I don’t think it was pretty at all, and I don’t think we took advantage of our lead and stayed composed,” Weise admitted. “I don’t think it was Sam’s rebounding that hurt us, but her dribbling that hurt us. We let her get offensive rebound upon offensive rebound.

“She didn’t hurt us so much in the first half, but she took the game over in the second half and that hurt us,” said the Allentown coach. “We didn’t relinquish the lead and won the game, but there are so many things we have to work on.”

“We tried to stay calm and confident. We tried to stay positive and not get down on ourselves. When they came back we knew we still had the lead and had to stay composed.”

“We were not aggressive, then we started forcing shots and there was more one-on-one,” said Irish coach James Martinos. “There wasn’t good ball movement the right way. Even when we went in for layups we were shying away. You have to go in aggressively for those shots.

“In the first half Sam was shying away with her shots. She could have had 40,” said Martinos, who did get some effective contributions from his bench — especially by freshman Kate Lafferty and Julie Adornetti.

The Irish ended their run of missed shots when Widman hit a layup 53 ticks into the third period that left them behind 29-16. They would stay within 10 after Widman closed the quarter with five of six straight ND points.

Allentown, which has huge CVC road games at Hopewell Valley Thursday and at West Windsor South Saturday morning, converted 12 of 18 foul shots in the final eight minutes to seal its biggest win yet.